We are now approaching a year since 9.18 I believe and the great light tank re-balance that saw the tier 10 lights introduced.

Yet despite for that entire time being consistently weak and undpowered we have had a few minor buffs that have done nothing to improve the competitiveness of these tanks (hell you could even argue the Rhm. has been nerfed).

In the meantime we have had overpowered monstrosities like the Obj. 268v4 and Obj. 430U introduced to the game, not to mention problematic tanks like the Super Conqueror, Badger, over buffs to the IS7, all adding to already too good and broken tanks like the Type 5.

Just look at the light tank performance compared to a 430U or 268v4 -

Only the 13-105 barely touches the reference line, the rest are way below even in the upper reaches of the playerbase, a 60% overall win rate player, is approaching a 8% better WR playing the 430U over say an Rhm.

That is ridiculous, these tanks cost the same as other tier 10 tanks, at 6.1 million credits, they also consistently have some of the highest research costs of any tier 10, a 268v4 will cost you around 215k experience, yet a T-100lt will cost nearly 280k experience. Yet the T-100 LT is like a tier 7 tank in comparison to a 268v4, that is ripping off players of their grinding time, hard earned credits and even in many cases real money where they get tanks that are not competitive.

Problems with these tanks -

1. Maps

Even with the new HD maps, the fundamental issues have not been fixed, if anything the new maps are worse for light tanks because pretty much anything can now hide in the OP HD bushes and the amount of cover and terrain available of maps that lights could use to actively spot is gone, meaning more and more redline campers have shots into areas where previously they didn't. You also have new base camping ledges like in the corner of Erlenberg that are close to uncounterable and are even more punishable to light tanks trying to actively spot for their team.

That is on the more open maps, just had a session with the T-100lt and got Mountain Pass, Ensk and Paris, three truly awful restricted maps that light tanks have no use on at all. I understand that not every map can suit every class all the time, but the map rotation consistently has maps that suit armoured vehicles at the expense of everything else, mobility, camo and view range is completely pointless on these maps. Since the HD change you can't even do the early spot in the middle because the view has been blocked by bushes, this used to be one of the few ways on Paris of getting some spotting done.

Ensk, Mines, Paris, Mountain Pass, Abbey, Ruinberg, Himmselsdorf etc. these aren't just maps that don't suit light tanks, they are maps that laugh in your face for choosing the play a light.

2. Hit Points.

Why so low? Tier 10 lights have 1400 - 1600 hit points, whilst most mediums are in the 1.9k to 2k range, with most heavies now averaging 2,5k, so the lights have around 1k less health than the heavies, yet are supposed to get closer and take all the risks to do the spotting, despite having virtually no armour. It makes no sense, at least put them at the lower end of the mediums up there with the Bat Chat and TVP at the 1.7 - 1,8k range. On a tier where everyone has excellent gun handling, and there are loads of massive alpha guns, mobility just doesn't save you like it might do on lower tiers, on tier 6 and 7 mediums there have poor dispersion, longish times, and heavies are even worse so they more struggle to hit fast moving targets. At tier 10 most mediums and many heavies will snap shot with ease and have faster velocities

3. Accuracy and penetration drop off.

Again why so bad? We have tanks that already have less alpha, less DPM and less pen than same tier meds and heavies, why should they have so much worse penetration at range and poor accuracy? Even the best penetration light the WZ-132-1 has less than 200 pen at 500m, with a base accuracy of 0.40.

Yet an IS7 with a 490 alpha gun, has 0.38 accuracy and at 500m still has 240 penetration, so you have a tank with all that armour much better designed for close range fighting being the better long range sniper than a light tank, for no logical reason.

4. Mobility + Camo trade off.

The main benefits of a light compared to other classes should be extreme mobility, better camo and view range which you then trade for worse guns, worse armour and hit points. Currently this trade off is not worth it.

Aside power to weight where the tier 10 lights have very high numbers, in the 35 - 45 hp/ton level, the tier 10 lights do not have a significant advantage in these areas over many tier 10 meds (and as explained above those advantages are often moot on many maps).

We have several tier 10 mediums that go 60-65kph, with the tier 10 lights also having similar top speed, in fact we have several heavies able to hit these top speeds, and many others that can comfortably got 50kph. Two of the tier 10 lights only go 65kph themselves, with the 13-105 marginally faster, whilst 3 tier 10 mediums match them for this top speed and have similarly fast reverse speeds.

Traverse wise it's a similar story, most of the tier 10 lights have traverse on medium terrain at around the 52 deg/s area, but even a sluggish tier 10 med like the Patton has 44, with the Russian meds higher than this, so we are talking 6-8 deg/s better traverse speeds.

Camo wise again the advantage is not huge, a 430U has around 16% base camo, with a WZ-132-1 only having around 17%.

So you have these tanks that have 20% less hit points, 30% less DPM, less penetration, less accuracy, but then are only slightly more mobile and have slightly more camo, whilst in many cases have worse view range than their fellow meds (T-100 and 13-105 both have 390, whilst the Russian meds and Bat Chat all have 400).

Fixes

IMO a quick and easy way to give these tanks a buff would be to give them special MM, don't change anything about the tanks but basically they can only get 3-5-7 or 5-10 MM, no full tier 10 MM (unless Grand Battles). These tanks are effectively tier 8.5 tanks, their firepower in many cases is worse than tier 9 meds, their hit points are the level of tier 8 tanks, make them more often face tier 8 and 9 tanks, rather than tier 10 tank which they are clearly not competitive with.

Alternatively they need buffs across the board, back to the levels they were at the end of the Sandbox testing before they got hammered on public test.

These means -

More view range

More speed

More DPM

Less pen drop off

Better accuracy.

EDIT: Oh and Strv camo and view range needs nerfing heavily, these things are complete hard counters to lights, despite being TDs that are supposed to be weak to light tanks. Maxed out tier 10 lights simply cannot outspot Strvs with net and binos even if they sit in the open.

Do I missrread the curve or is wz way higher than reference, all the other ones very close and just rhm way below? Sounds decently balanced. Rhm just sucks and wz is just the best one.
Also: this curve is BS and can not be used. Light tanks are matched against light tanks, so all you get is a comparison between LTs, not LTs versus mediums or whatever.

Do I missrread the curve or is wz way higher than reference, all the other ones very close and just rhm way below? Sounds decently balanced. Rhm just sucks and wz is just the best one.
Also: this curve is BS and can not be used. Light tanks are matched against light tanks, so all you get is a comparison between LTs, not LTs versus mediums or whatever.

They are all below the reference line by 1-2% or more.

Good point, so even though they are always matched against an equally crappy tank, they still underperform. So in fact they are even more underpowered than the graph show.

I guess this graph just represents the inability of the average people playing them. Lights don’t have the same task as meds TDS or the other classes. If you have to face them you or your team did something wrong.

only true thing is maps could be more focused on using them, but arty has same problems on some.

Light tank is a light tank for a reason and they should be at least penetration/damage-nerfed. I hate taking a beating from a T8-T10 (auto loading) light tank when driving T9 heavy.

Why? Why should a tank be bad just becauss its classified as a light tank? All that means is the tank is light, little armour and fast. The guns are already super bad, they can be buffed while still being bad.

marlboro80, on 29 March 2018 - 02:30 PM, said:

I guess this graph just represents the inability of the average people playing them. Lights don’t have the same task as meds TDS or the other classes. If you have to face them you or your team did something wrong.

only true thing is maps could be more focused on using them, but arty has same problems on some.

Do you even know what the graphs mean? They show how a tanks wr compares to a players wr. It shows that unicums underperform in them just as much as tomatoes.

Jigabachi, on 29 March 2018 - 02:31 PM, said:

But you don't achieve that balance by changing the stats. You achieve that by providing an environment in which every tank has an opportunity to shine.

In other words: Want to balance light tanks (or pretty much all tank classes)?

Offer bigger and more open maps and rework the old ones.

Tanks can be balances by stats and environment, you can achieve it by both. WG can make better maps or they can buff their stats. Doesnt matter, but if they dont change maps they should buff them , something needs to be done.

I grinded the t100lt : I like to drive it but ... I don't really like to play it.

It s fun to drive but all the surroundings suck : all the team being clear the victory is depending on you, damage is very low, you are focused and heavily damaged by arties, most of the time in tiers X, ...

Most "funny" thing : repeatedly bouncing with HE on the side of the german tx arty . I am still wondering what could be this HE use.

But you don't achieve that balance by changing the stats. You achieve that by providing an environment in which every tank has an opportunity to shine.

In other words: Want to balance light tanks (or pretty much all tank classes)?

Offer bigger and more open maps and rework the old ones.

Your idea of making all tanks being able to shine is making superheavies unplayable lol.

Sorry but you achieve balance by both stats and maps. Using your logic a loltractor at t10 would be balanced if it got the right map. Sorry but currently lights have too many disadvantages compared to other tanks

RU 251 is my most played tank, but I've not even bothered to get the Rhm Pzw; why bother when it's clearly just bad?

Personally I can live with the bad accuracy and low pen at range, but there's absolutely no excuse for the terrible DPM. DPM was what allowed the old tier 8 RU to outplay people up close, but now both the new RU and tier 10 Rhm Pzw have 300 less DPM, when the tier 10 should really have more. Why?

WG and some of the people in this thread clearly think that lights should be completely toothless vision bots, maybe that's fine in theory, but do you really think that's going to provide an entertaining experience for the people playing them? Or is it just going to make them the team whipping boy that allows other people to farm damage before being first sent back to the garage, ultimately leading to nobody wanting to touch the class?

Bad accuracy and bad pen at distance mean they don't threaten the meds position in the meta, giving them good DPM that can only be applied consistently at close range would give them a unique space as high skill-cap, high risk/reward close up glass cannons. But that would require certain players accepting the hard truth that the weight of your tank shouldn't dictate whether you win or lose a fight, as if this was some kind of tank based top trumps.

Op as always puts forward an excellent post on the subject. T10 lights are crap... its a fact. Wg need to sort it out a year is long enough to gather data and start to plan out a strategy to make them at least competitive, bigger maps and better than med view ranges would be a good start. Then sort out the crappy pen drop off.. which is just plain stupid imo.

I'd be pleased if they just fixed the guns, they're about as accurate as if the dumb gunner thought it would be a good idea to turn the turret while driving past a bunch of trees. Map removals and reworks have made light life generally better so I see 1.0 as an indirect LT buff. Which is nice.